Stranded
by ComXDude
Summary: -SPOILERS LIE AHEAD FOR MASS EFFECT 3- The Reaper threat is but mere moments away from being destroyed, but is Kilton Shepard willing to put his life on the line to save the galaxy? What's more, how will Tali react with her love seemingly destroyed?


**Mass Effect – Kilton Shepard**

 **Custom Ending (Based on "Perfect Ending")**

Kilton Shepard stares down at the being which he can only describe as an AI, although it is above that of any Intelligence that he has seen in the galaxy. His face, marred by the glowing scars that are the remnants of Cerberus' resurrection of him after spending 2 years clinically dead, is cold and emotionless as he considered his options.

To force the Reapers under his control would be to do what he had spent the last several months trying to stop Cerberus from doing, and to completely lose what he is to do so completely breaks the slightest inclinations he had towards the idea. Forcing all synthetics and organics to become as one without giving them any input on the matter is even worse, as he had spent the last 3 years trying to destroy all the Reapers and their technology, not to become integrated with it. He wasn't even going to consider just leaving the Reapers to it.

The only option left for him is to destroy the Reapers, even knowing the destruction that he would cause to the technology of the galaxy; fortunately, enough people would be spared as to repair the damages, and his mission would be fulfilled. In his mind, he played back what the star-child had said to him: "You yourself are partially synthetic. The Catalyst would likely kill you as well..."

He remembers Tali as he left her with Garrus, and she cried to him not to leave her. To let her come with him... and finally giving in and pleading, simply, "Please... come back to me," as the lights of her eyes clouded under her mask as large, sorrowful tears formed, her voice cracking as she fought her sobs back.

He promised, saying, "I promise I'll come back. I won't leave you alone," before going off to activate the Crucible. "It's worth it..." he says, tears welling up in his eyes and spilling down. "I'm sorry Tali. I... can't come back." He begins the march towards the circuit that, when destroyed, would spell the end of the Reapers. He raises his pistol, and he feels the eyes of the AI on his back, and he slowly limps up the ramp. At the top, he looks down at Earth and the battle going on around it. He sees the Normandy darting around throughout the midst of it, and sets his jaw, wipes away the tears, and tenses his finger on the trigger. "I love you…" he hoarsely whispers as he quickly pulls the trigger several times, gunshots tearing through the silence of the Crucible as the bullets slam into the complex circuitry.

The world for a moment smells of ozone for a moment, then the crucible fires up. Its beam turns from blue to red and forms a sphere in the center, and on his comms, he hears the command given for everyone to retreat. He turns off his visor and headpiece, but keeps it on his head, and watches as his allies retreat from the Citadel. They beam away, using the power of the Mass Relays to escape, but one ship waits: the Normandy. It remains for several seconds, before speeding off like the rest in a blur of white, black, and grey.

The tears return on his face, and Shepard simply speaks towards where the Normandy went in his last moments, "I am so sorry Tali. This is the only way…" The orange light passes over him, quickly heading in all directions at a speed that nearly instantly is faster than the ships that went through the Relays.

The implants in his body that brought him back to life start burning, and it's all that he can do not to scream. He feels them all shorting out and breaking apart within his flesh, which has since knitted back together, but the scars on his face, which glow with orange-red light from the implants, begin leaking blood which streams down, getting in his eyes and mouth, and he collapses to his knees, before face-planting onto the metal. With a final groan of agony, he tries to keep himself conscious but to no avail and everything goes black.

 **Meanwhile…**

On the Normandy, every is scattered around the ship, incredibly tense, as they wait to see if they are safe from the Crucible's potential destructive power. Joker, in the cockpit, is pushing the FLT drives to their limit trying to outrun the orange sphere behind them, but it catches up to him, engulfing the ship in orange energy. It causes damage to several systems, but due to their speed exceeding the speed of light, the distortion of space and time around them had managed to spare them from complete destruction.

The Normandy, operating only on a few thrusters, swerves sharply to the side and begins dropping towards a nearby planet. One with great green forests and large bodies of water; a garden planet, if you will. They drop quickly, Joker trying to cushion the landing, and manages an emergency landing, sparing them most of the impact damage. Around the ship, everyone is jostled, and several pieces of their armor was destroyed by the Crucible's blast.

Tali is in Shepard's cabin, her mask off and hood down as tears streamed down her face. In her grief, she hardly notices the lights turn out (with the exception of those in the fish tank, which had its technology miraculously unharmed). She sobs, repeatedly saying Shepard's name and cradling the picture of him that she keeps in her quarters with her. "You promised you'd come back…" she croaked, curling up with the photo.

Meanwhile, back in the cockpit, Joker breaths a sigh of relief. "Okay… I think we avoided the worst of it. EDI, we're-" He looks to the side and sees EDI, his robotic lover, completely limp in her seat, her face slack and eyes blank. "EDI?!" Joker leaps out of his seat, ignoring the pain it causes, and grabs her shoulders. "Don't tell me you're dead. Please, tell me this is just a joke. We just lost Shepard! I can't lose you too!"

Getting no response, Joker drops to his knees and cradles her robotic head, while Garrus walks into the doorway. "Joker? Are w-" he asks, but upon seeing the situation decides to slowly walk backwards. Putting on his helmet, after making sure it isn't overtly damaged by the Crucible's blast, he exits through the airlock. On his visor, he sees readings of the planet. Its atmosphere is breathable, although the oxygen level is slightly higher than Turians are used to, and as a result plants and animals grow more abundantly on the planet. Additionally, it alerts him that there is not a sustainable source of food safe for consumption of dextro-protein races, such as Turians and Quarians; he and Tali can't eat whatever is on the planet, as far as he knows. Its forests blanket as far as he can see, even though he is on top of a large hill or a small mountain, and behind him several more crew members follow; Ashley, Dr. Michel, Liara, Taylor, Allers, and the rest of the crew. Eventually Joker joins them, but Tali remains within the ship.

Garrus goes in to check on her, and finds her in the same spot she's been sobbing in. "Tali…" he says quietly, standing at the far end of the room.

"You promised… you promised me you wouldn't leave me alone," she sobs, not noticing his entry. At this, Vakarian walks over towards her.

"I know he did. I was there. Whatever happened up there, I don't think he had a choice." He pauses, placing a hand on her shoulder, but Tali shrugs it off and doesn't even glance at him. "And Tali? You know what?"

Breathing shakily and sniffing heavily, she quietly asks, "What?"

"He did this all for us, but specifically you. He's sacrificed many lives and his own health for the greater good before, but before you and him started dating I hadn't seen him ready to lay down his life for anyone before." He slowly breaths, and Tali sits up.

"You're right. He did this so I… so we could live. And because… I had always wanted to have a house on the homeworld. He said that he would give it to me." She looks down at the picture again, a tear dripping down and splattering against the glass. "He gave me my world back. He showed me love, and respect, like nobody else did before." Tali shakily inhales again, before continuing. "And I couldn't even pay him back for any of it. He… h-he deserved better than me." She breaks down again, letting out loud, heart wrenching sobs and, through them, manages, "I'll never be able to love anyone again. Shepard's the only one. And… he's gone."

"Tali, we're all mourning him, and nobody was closer to him than you, but we have a new planet to explore. We could repair the ship and join up with anyone we find nearby. Besides, Joker lost EDI as well. He's also taking it really hard, but he's ready to go out with us."

Looking up again, Tali quietly asks, "Really?"

"Really. But if we have any chance of survival, we need to repair the Normandy. The engines and a few minor systems are out, but for the most part it'll still be functional. Besides, there's no dextro-safe food on this planet. Once our provisions run out, we're toast unless we get off of the planet." With this revelation, Tali stands up and walks towards the door, taking the picture with her, however. She puts her mask back on, then activates her omni-tool and summons Chatika. Tali, Garrus, and Chatika make their way from the captain's quarters to the airlock, then arrive outside of the Normandy with the rest of the crew. There, several people are consoling Joker, but when they look at Tali the sympathy in their eyes deepens further, and some of them break down in tears.

Chatika immediately scans the environment around them, then returns and alerts Tali that although there are no safe plants for dextro-consumption, there are several species of small wildlife in the woodlands immediately around that are safe once cooked. "So much for no dextro-food…" she softly says to herself, so quietly that he helmet's comms don't pick it up.

From there, Tali's small VI drone goes hunting for resources and discovers that several Cerberus and Alliance vessels had crashed nearby, and had been there for several months. Additionally, although nature had attempted to take the ships for themselves, most of the technology inside is salvageable. "That's one good thing," Joker mumbles, wiping a tear from his face onto his sleeve, which is currently soaked from previous wipings.

They make their way there, Tali and Garrus at the back of the group in silence. The former barely seems aware of their movements, as Garrus regularly has to redirect her to follow the group, but they manage to get back to the ships. Once there, the crew begins salvaging what they can, but they don't know what they precisely need. Liara sends Glyph to the Normandy to get schematics and damage assessments, and it comes back telling them that they need parts to repair the thrusters, communications, artificial gravity, and parts of the cockpit's UI to start, as well as lots of wiring to repair that which had burnt out.

They get this, but Tali is silent throughout everything, sitting on a fallen log with Shepard's picture, tears falling onto the inside of her visor. Garrus, his gun drawn to protect everyone if anything or anyone were to attack, sits next to her. "Tali, I know you're upset. I am too, Shepard was my best damn friend in the galaxy, but we need to stay productive. You can't honor his memory by simply sobbing. He would want us to keep fighting; he always talked about doing what we need, and waiting to mourn over our losses until we're safe. On this planet? We don't know where we are, and if there's anyone around. Or, if there are people, if _they're_ safe."

Tali doesn't respond immediately, but had looked up slightly and was now staring at the ground between her knees. "I'm just wondering if I should just take my mask off out here and join him. Without him… I don't know what I'll do, Garrus!"

"You can't talk like that, Tali!" he says, fear edging into his voice. "You and I have been with Shepard since the very beginning, and if you let yourself die and met him in the afterlife, what would he say? We don't even know that he's dead yet!" Garrus looks up at the sky. "What if he survived, and he's left on the Citadel still? There's no way to tell without getting there. He had his helmet with him, and the blast only partially destroyed synthetics and electronics, at least for the Normandy and some of our gear, so there's a chance that he could still be alive."

At this, Tali stands up. "If there's a chance, I need to take it." She marches towards the crashed shuttles, then begins working with everyone else to repair the Normandy, although she doesn't stop crying throughout; she simply does so less. All the while, she thinks, _if he's dead, I can't go on. Not knowing that he's gone. Without Shepard, I'm nothing. He made me who I am, and I told him that I owe him my life, but he was the one who gave his for me…_

 **Back on the Citadel**

Shepard, after being unconscious for several hours, lay in a pile of charred metal. Suddenly, as he regains consciousness, he sharply inhales, and his body seizes up at the intense pain that it causes. On the ground next to him is his helmet, which he immediately places upon his head. Its readout told him that there was enough residual oxygen to last several days at the rate of dispersion, but he still keeps it on for a short period of time

He tries the radio in it, but to no avail. The comms are out on it, so he takes it off and throws if on the ground next to him, even though any action of moving his muscles is agony. On his visor, however, when he switches it on he realizes that it is completely unharmed. He tries the comms, which work, but gets no feedback since nobody is anywhere near to him with any sort of radio; Earth is still hundreds of thousands, if not millions of miles away and he has no idea where anyone else is. He tries the quantum-link to the Normandy that's built into his omni-tool, but the signal is completely dead, and he knows that EDI is too at that moment.

Doing all that he can think to do, Kilton activates his suit's distress beacon and records two messages before lying back down again, wincing at every sharp, stabbing pain that the movement causes. He hopes that the distress signal, with its extra strength over a standard radio signal, can reach to somebody. There he lay for several hours, before he fingers open the pocket on his leg armor and pulls out a small bit of provisions. He has enough to last several weeks, but he still eats sparingly. He has no idea how long he would be there before anyone rescued him, or if he even will be rescued.

In his mind, he sees Tali and his heart ached. "I hope she's okay," he says to himself, his voice echoing across the ruined station. With that, tears roll down his face, but he knows in his heart that she's a fighter, and is confident she would keep going with Garrus by her side, as he's the toughest SOB that Shepard knows. He relaxes his entire body, then tests his biotics. A soft blue glow envelops him, the familiar tingles overtaking his body, and he manages to reach out around him. The dark energy fields touch the corpse of the Citadel, and he can feel it, but detects no life. At the edge of his reach, the skeletons of Reapers remain, but all life within is completely destroyed; Reaper technology was the Crucible's main target, and as such was hit much harder by it. All around him, he feels nothing but death; it's a graveyard.

Beads of sweat appear on his skin as he tries to maintain the dark energy field, but it breaks, and he is left feeling exhausted and his muscles begin screaming in pain again. His eyes remain closed, and he drifts back into sleep.

 **The Next Day**

Back on the unknown garden planet, the Normandy has been repaired enough for it to travel and they discuss what they should do. Tali, immediately, says, "We need to go back to the Citadel. If there's even a chance Shepard survived, I need it, or else I don't know what I'll do."

"That would work except for one small problem… we have no idea where it is relative to here," Traynor says. With that, Tali sits down, her anguish taking over again, as her hands go to her face and she begins crying again. "Oh… sorry Tali. I didn't mean it to be so… harsh. It's just, we can't get there without knowing how to get to it. Joker?" she asks, looking over at the pilot of the ship.

Before he can respond, though, Tali softly responds. "It's not your fault. It's just," she starts shakily, choking back her sobs. "I need to know for sure and… it never occurred to me that we might not be able to get back to him."

The crew remains silent for what feels like an eternity before Joker pipes up, "Well, according to the ship's readouts we didn't get too far from the Citadel. At Relay speed, which we were at, we only went for a matter of seconds. In normal FTL speed, it's about a week's travel to the citadel. Now, all we need to do is find out which direction it's in. I should be able to trace back the signal in a few days."

"But what if Shepard doesn't have that long?" Tali whispers, barely audible, even though her helmet's speaker amplifies it slightly.

"Well… just blindly guessing has much greater odds of putting us even further away from him."

"Please… there has to be something. Just… please do something. I need to know if he's alive." Tali's voice shakes again, and she begins sobbing once more. "Please Joker."

Looking at her, the pilot feels nothing but guilt at not knowing what to do, before suddenly he gets an idea. "The radio! If he's able to, Shepard would put out a radio signal or distress beacon or something!" He turns it on, and for a few tense moments it seems entirely silent; Tali's sobs end for those moments in her hope that he survived. Static then bursts through, and the ship picks up nothing, and the Quarian woman cries with renewed anguish. "That's all I can do…" Joker says quietly, lowering his head, before quietly adding, "Not without EDI." With that, he begins crying, too, and soon several more crew members are adding their tears.

Through the static, a voice is heard, very faintly, and they're unable to hear what it's saying, but Tali stands up immediately and says, "Trace it." Joker does so, and it appears to be coming from the direction roughly 30 degrees clockwise of the stern, give or take a few degrees. Additionally, the projected distance they would need to take to the Citadel matches that of the beacon's distance; they're about 6 days' travel from the location it originates, and Joker tries to boost the signal for clarification, but to no avail.

He moves his attention to getting the ship off the ground, which he does, but without the usual presence of a full crew or EDI the ship moves slowly and sluggishly. He manages to get it into the air, and soon his old instincts return and he straightens it out, then points the ship's nose where he needs to go and launches into FTL travel.

Midway through the travel, they find a fuel depot that is intact enough to refuel the Normandy, and as they wait there the ship's lights go off, and then over the intercom a familiar voice rings out. "Hello Joker. I'm back," as a glowing orange sphere appears from the projector on the dashboard.

"EDI?" Joker exclaims in shock. "Is that you?"

"Have you met any other AIs with a voice this... seductive?" She says as she turns the 'eye' towards Traynor. "That was a joke."

"Well, you don't have you smokin' hot bod anymore," Joker starts, then adds, "But you're still welcome with me in the cockpit as long as you stay yourself." At that moment everyone begins shuffling uncomfortably, and Tali sneaks away from the group with tears still cascading down her face. She quickly heads up the Shepard's cabin, and there she again curls up in his bed, her mask and hood off, and sobs deeply again. Back in cockpit, however, Joker asks, "How are you back?"

"The Normandy was built with several back-up versions of myself that would update with the memories and experiences of the currently-used copy, and if I were to be 'killed' I would come back to 'life' with another version, although it would take a day or two."

 **Several Days Later**

After traveling for several days, the Normandy arrives at the ruins of the Citadel and the battlefield around Earth, and they quickly begin scouring the ruined station in hopes of finding Shepard. By this point, they've heard his distress call clearly, and it says, "This is Commander Kilton Shepard of the Normandy, first ever human Specter. I have survived the activation of the Catalyst and I'm stranded on the Citadel's remains, currently in orbit around Earth. In case I don't survive, I have a message for the galaxy: I have faith that you can recover, and that you will continue to work as one. I brought you together, and I expect that you remain working with one-another. Please, forward this message to anybody you can and spread it across the galaxy, regardless of if I am found to be dead or alive."

Tali had begun sleeping in Shepard's quarters and, the very first day the entire message could be heard clearly, she replayed it over and over again on her omni-tool, and discovered that there was a second message also being transferred on several sub-frequencies, and encrypted specifically to let her omni-tool pick it up. "Tali, if you're hearing this then I want you to know that I love you, and if anyone other than Tali is listening then I want you to stop listening immediately, or put your head through a noose.

"From the moment I met you in that alley in the Wards, I knew you were someone special, and this was reinforced when you were able to overcome your hatred towards Cerberus to come back with me. I had never been ready to sacrifice myself before I met you, but in the Crucible, I suddenly realized that I was ready to let myself die if you would survive. I love you, and you've been in my heart since that fateful day. There's more that I want to tell you—more that I want to do with you—but I don't have enough time to say it in this message. Here's to hoping that you find me."

She listened to that message repeatedly over-and-over again, happy to hear the sound of his voice, not caring about the substance of the message itself; she already knew it all in her heart and didn't need further confirmation. As soon as they arrived at the Citadel, Tali spent all of her time in the cockpit looking out the front windows looking for any sign of him. Eventually, on one of the arms, Tali sees a glimmer of light and tells Joker to shine the light down. There, caught in the searchlight, is a human form that raises an arm up to cover its eyes. Emblazoned on the armor is the N7 insignia of Shepard's armor. Tali rushes to the airlock while Garrus follows and they wait for Joker to put the ship down, then cycles it and gets Shepard into the ship, Tali embracing him tenderly while Vakarian stands to the side.

Tali then looks up and stares into Shepard's eyes, tears again falling down her face. "I missed you," she says, her voice cracking with emotion.

"I missed you too," Kilton replies. The airlock sterilizes the room, as is its standard procedure, and Tali immediately removes her mask and locks lips with Shepard. The doors cycle, and the rest of the crew is standing outside, waiting for Shepard to come back in.

They all watch as the deep, emotional kiss continues, and when they finally break, Tali whispers, "Don't ever leave me again. Please."

Shepard looks her in the eyes and states, "I won't. I promise. As long as have strength in my body, I will stay by your side." It is only at this moment that Kilton realizes that the rest of the crew is there, and he looks at them standing around them, and he smiles. "Now, I think It's time for us to get back home."

 **Epilogue**

Over the next several months, the Normandy helps to transfer people to their home planets and to aid in rescue missions, search squadrons, and various other aid-based jobs. Tali and Shepard become inseparable over this time, and Garrus almost always accompanies them, as well as Joker and EDI being close friends to the group. All of them have omni-tools which are quantum-programmed to allow instant communication at any time between them, and EDI manages to get a body almost exactly the same as her previous back, as she had saved the schematics to her databanks, although Joker insists she adds certain "additional features" to aid in their relationship.

After they finish up the last of their work, Garrus returns to Palaven and aids in the rebuilding there whilst Joker and EDI return to Earth, but they remain in touch, and they additionally stay in regular contact with the various other allies and crew members who had helped them throughout the three-year mission against the Reapers. Tali and Shepard go to Rannoch and build a home together, and both of them end up adapting to the atmosphere quickly; by the end of the year Tali didn't need to have her environmental suit at all except when performing vigorous physical activity and Kilton could live on it well enough, as its atmosphere is relatively similar to Earth's. Shepard ends up undergoing an expensive, experimental genetic procedure that made him more alike to the Quarians (only in genetics; his physical appearance is unchanged), and as such he can safely eat dextro-protein food. It also makes his physiology compatible with Tali's, removing any problems that would otherwise be caused by cross-species intercourse, but they would be unable to have children together without further procedures to make them more compatible, and although Shepard is willing to undergo the operation for their relationship, Tali doesn't want him to; she likes him being human, and the scandal of the youngest ever Migrant Fleet Admiral having a relationship with a human Alliance Commander excites her, but their life here is quiet, even with them aiding in the reconstruction of an entire planet. They planned to get married, but decided to wait until the nearby Mass Relay was repaired as they want their closest friends present for it.

They ended up receiving a message inviting them on several new missions, but they feel that they had enough excitement in those 3 years to last several lifetimes, and they elect instead to remain on Rannoch, living a life with Tali's people and with few qualms. They had managed to save several geth from being wiped out by the Crucible, and they share the planet with them, working in harmony together, and their past wars and conflicts have been put behind them. Here Shepard and Tali would live for 2 more years before the Mass Relay nearest to them is repaired, and as soon as it is Joker and EDI come through in the Normandy, which he is allowed to keep after the SR-3 and SR-4 were created, and after joining him on board they found that Garrus, Ashley, Miranda, Jack, Wrex, Eve, Grunt, Liara, Kolyat, Jacob, Kasumi, Zaeed, James, Javik, Samara, and Taylor all were on board as well.

Shepard and Tali took this moment to catch up, and it was at this moment that Shepard proposed to Tali. She accepted, and they were married on the surface of the planet, and nearly every Quarian and Geth on the planet, as well as everybody who came aboard the Normandy to visit, attended the ceremony. From here on, although the couple still lived on Rannoch primarily, they spent long deals of time aboard the Normandy and with the crew, and even returned to military duty only four months after their marriage, as the quiet life, however calming, gave little in the means of excitement, and they, along with Garrus and Joker, began working as an elite galactic defense squadron, which they called the Legion, as a reference to their deceased Geth friend, who died to let his people become individual living units and to help them fight the Reapers.


End file.
